Parties

Here it is ladies and gentlemen, in all it's drum bangin', booty shakin' finery - the party to end all parties - Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. For four days prior to Ash Wednesday each year Rio lights up and literally no-one is spared!

The commercial aspects of Carnival at the Sambadrome we've all seen on the box - the Parade of Schools where multi-million dollar floats and scantily clad locals (and tourists) compete to the rhythm of their baterias but Carnival in Rio de Janeiro is much, much more than what goes on in the Sambadrome.

Follow the bloco scene and party all night long to live music, local processions and Brazilian samba fuelled by plenty of the local poison, caipirihna - available from just about anyone, anywhere, anytime. For recuperation during those hazy daylight hours relax on some of the most magnificent beaches that grace God's given earth (Copabobana, Ipanema), then, prepare to do it all again. Carnival in Rio is in the streets, it's in the people, it's rhythmic and it's incessant. If you're body can handle it, you've just got to experience one Rio Carnival before your time is up!

Glastonbury - or Glasto to it's friends - is a multi-headed behemoth of an event, a legendary hippie gathering and the largest greenfield music and performing arts festival in the world.

Today it's headline musicians are plucked from a pouch of the biggest players of the day but it doesn't stop with the live tunes. For four days each and every June 170,000+ festival-goers are treated to over 700 performances of music, dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and a myriad of other arts on the 900 acre grounds - rain, hail or shine, though it's often the former.

So if you're taste in music is eclectic, your need for sleep non-existent and there's a touch of hippie stirring somewhere deep inside, then a trip to Glastonbury is a must at least once in this lifetime.

Each and every August in Buñol (a picturesque Spanish village just outside of Valencia) La Tomatina, the world's largest food fight is played out. The missiles, tomatoes, the targets, anyone crazed enough to turn up, the result, tomato-based carnage. Welcome to La Tomatina!

If being part of an immense sweaty throng moving to a single electronic beat is your thing then why not head for the Mecca of techno - Germany - for the one, for the only......Love Parade.

Join some of the globes top DJs each July as they take the party to the streets spinning to a crowd of a million plus hard core ravers. At night local clubs turn the event into a non-stop party.

So pack your toothbrush, your dance shoes and a bouncy disposition - forget the pajamas - and head to the Love Parade for the maddest, wildest weekend of your life.

Each and every August the chic London suburb of Notting Hill turns it on for Europe’s biggest celebration of Carnival. DJs and live acts take to the streets, colorful floats and scantily clad revellers ply the parade route to a samba beat and miles of street stalls sell jerk chicken and blackened corn on the cob by the bucket-load. If you make it to London for one weekend this year make it the bank holiday weekend in August for London's very own carnival - Notting Hill Carnival.

At noon on the seventh day of the seventh month (that's July 7th for those calendarily challenged) for a duration of seven days, the Spanish city of Pamplona plays host to the festival of San Fermin (known locally as Sanfermines and famously depicted in Hemingway's, The Sun Also Rises).

The event draws party-goers from near and far and although Sanfermines entails so much more to the locals, it's the Encierro - the daily running of the bulls - that the majority of the tourists are on hand to see. For a little over half a mile bull runners - clad in all white with red handkerchiefs tied around their necks - battle the cobbles of Santo Domingo en route to El Plaza del Toros whilst in pursuit are six, infuriated, agitated and totally disorientated toros. Injuries are numerous, since 1924 they've proven fatal for 13 protagonists.

San Fermin is a festival steeped in history, tradition and local culture but not without it's detractors as is seen in the annual Running of the Nudes - an event highlighting the animal cruelty aspects of San Fermin.